Barbara Kingsolver - The Bean Trees

“His own mother said that?”

“Can you believe it? Of course it was all in Spanish, I had to get it secondhand, but that was the general gist. And it makes sense, don’t you think? Isn’t there some saying about not throwing good loving after bad?”

“I think it’s money they say that about. Good money after bad.”

“Well, the same goes, is what I say. Oh shoot, can you hang on a second? Dwayne Ray’s got something about ready to put in his mouth.” I waited while she saved Dwayne Ray from his probably nineteen-thousandth brush with death. I loved Lou Ann.

Turtle was playing the game where you see how far you can get without touching the floor, walking only on the furniture. She was doing pretty well. There was a long row of old-fashioned wooden benches with spindle backs and armrests, lined up side by side down one wall of the hallway. For some reason it made me think of a chain gang-a hundred guys could sit on those benches, all handcuffed together. Or a huge family, I suppose, waiting for some important news. They could all hold hands.

“Okay, I’m back. So there’s one more thing I have to tell you. Remember about the meteors? I called up Ramona Quiroz in San Diego, long distance. There wasn’t any meteor shower. Not at all! Can you believe it? That was just the absolute last straw.”

“Well, thank heavens,” I said. It occurred to me that nobody else on earth could have understood what Lou Ann had just said.

“So that’s the scoop, Angel’s history. Now I’m seeing this guy from Red Hot Mama’s by the name of Cameron John. Cameron’s his first name and John’s his last. Can you believe it?”

“I had a science teacher like that once,” I said. “So does Red Hot Mama’s give out a sex manual for the chile packers-how to do it without touching anything?”

“Taylor, I swear. He does tomatillos, and I just boss people now, as you very well know. Anyway I can’t wait till you meet him, to see what you think. I know Mama would take one look and keel over dead-he’s about seven feet tall and black as the ace of spades. But, Taylor, he is so sweet. My biggest problem is I keep feeling like I don’t deserve anybody to be that nice to me. He invited me over for dinner and made this great something or other with rice and peanuts and I don’t know what all. He used to be a Rastafarian.”

“A what?”

“Rastafarian. It’s a type of religion. And he’s got this dog, a Doberman pinscher? Named Mister T, only Cameron didn’t name it that, somebody gave it to him. It’s got pierced ears, Taylor, I swear to God, with all these little gold rings. I can’t believe I actually went out with this guy I’ve gotten so brave hanging around you. Six months ago it would have scared the living daylights out of me just to have to walk by him on the street.”

“Which, Cameron or Mister T?”

“Either one. And oh, I can’t tell you, he was so good with Dwayne Ray. It just made me want to cry, or take a picture or something, to see this great big man playing with a little teeny pale white baby.”

“So are you moving in with him, or what?” I tried my best to sound happy for her.

“What, me? No! Cameron’s sweet as can be, but I’m real content with things the way they are now. To tell you the truth, I’m sure you’re a lot easier to live with than him and Mister T.”

“Oh. Well, I’m glad.”

“Taylor, remember that time you were mad at me because you didn’t want us to act like a family? That all we needed was a little dog named Spot? Well, don’t get mad, but I told somebody that you and Turtle and Dwayne Ray were my family. Somebody at work said, ‘Do you have family at home?’ And I said, ‘Sure,’ without even thinking. I meant you all. Mainly I guess because we’ve been through hell and high water together. We know each other’s good and bad sides, stuff nobody else knows.”

It was hard for me to decide what to say.

“I don’t mean till death do us part, or anything,” she said. “But nothing on this earth’s guaranteed, when you get right down to it, you know? I’ve been thinking about that. About how your kids aren’t really yours, they’re just these people that you try to keep an eye on, and hope you’ll all grow up someday to like each other and still be in one piece. What I mean is, everything you ever get is really just on loan. Does that make sense?”

“Sure,” I said. “Like library books. Sooner or later they’ve all got to go back into the night drop.”

“Exactly. So what’s the point worrying yourself sick about it. You’d just as well enjoy it while you’ve got it.”

“I guess you could say we’re family,” I said. I watched Turtle climb over the armrests onto the last bench by the front door, which stood wide open to the street. She turned around and looked for me, and started making her way back.

There was silence on the other end of the line. “Lou Ann? You still there?” I asked.

“I can’t stand the suspense, Taylor. Do you still have her?”

“Have who?”

“Turtle, for heaven’s sake.”

“Oh, sure. She’s my legal daughter now.”

“What!” Lou Ann shrieked. “You’re kidding!”

“Nope. It’s done, for all practical purposes. There’s still some rigamarole in court for getting a birth certificate that takes about six months, but that’s not too bad. It takes longer than that to make a kid from scratch, is how I look at it.”

“I can’t believe it. You found her mother? Or her aunt, or whatever it was?”

I looked down the hall. “I can’t really talk here. We’ll be home in two days at the outside, and I’ll tell you everything then, okay? But it’s going to take all night and a lot of junk food. Do you know what? I missed your salsa. The medium, though, not the firecracker style.”

Lou Ann’s breath came out like a slow leak in a tire. “Taylor, I was scared to death you’d come back without her.”

We had cleared Oklahoma City and were out on the plain before sundown. It felt like old times, heading into the low western horizon. I let Turtle see the adoption certificate and she looked at it for a very long time, considering that there were no pictures on it.

“That means you’re my kid,” I explained, “and I’m your mother, and nobody can say it isn’t so. I’ll keep that paper for you till you’re older, but it’s yours. So you’ll always know who you are.”

She bobbed her head up and down like a hen, with her eyes fixed on something out the window that only she could see.

“You know where we’re going now? We’re going home.”

She swung her heels against the seat. “Home, home, home, home,” she sang.

The poor kid had spent so much of her life in a car, she probably felt more at home on the highway than anywhere else. “Do you remember home?” I asked her. “That house where we live with Lou Ann and Dwayne Ray? We’ll be there before you know it.”

But it didn’t seem to matter to Turtle, she was happy where she was. The sky went from dust-color to gray and then cool black sparked with stars, and she was still wide awake. She watched the dark highway and entertained me with her vegetable-soup song, except that now there were people mixed in with the beans and potatoes: Dwayne Ray, Mattie, Esperanza, Lou Ann and all the rest.

And me. I was the main ingredient.

Barbara Kingsolver was born on April 8, 1955. She grew up "in the middle of an alfalfa field," in the part of eastern Kentucky that lies between the opulent horse farms and the impoverished coal fields. While her family has deep roots in the region, she never imagined staying there herself. "The options were limited-grow up to be a farmer or a farmer's wife."